So, Kingdom Arts and Sciences Festival is coming up and I'm hoping to pull together a Persona Pentathlon entry. I'm going to hope that my Wulf and Eadwacer translation counts - it isn't something that a 10th century Anglo-Saxon woman would have had, because she would not have needed a translation - but it's an SCA A&S artifact of the era. So nyeh.
I'm working on a tafl game, and I'd like to make a brocaded tablet-woven band. That leaves two more entries. Assuming I run out of time, I'll probably grab another poem I wrote in the last year - either the Lay of Storvik's Founding (although again - not something a real person in 10th cen. England would have had) or one of my praise poems.
But I think I can manage a new poem/song as well. Since Wulf and Eadwacer is solemn, I think it should be something more irreverent, based on one of the bawdy riddles in the Exeter Book. The "butter churn" one isn't as well-known as the "onion", and I prefer either to the "helmet" and "key" ones.
I can feel that my brain already wants to write this up into a "Pills to Purge Melancholy"-esque eighteenth century song with a refrain going something like "Back and forth and up and down, the young man stirred it all around." Nnnnnno. Must keep it good and tenth century. A little refrain might not hurt, with a nod to Deor and W&E, but that's almost more of a recurring end line than a full-on modern refrain.
In a similar (but not identical) vein, I came across this neat journal article about women's songs in Anglo-Saxon England. Their main themes are separation and desire, and it might be fun to write a few.
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.